9000 Acre Purchase by The Nature Conservancy, Bath County, Virginia

Comments to the Bath County Board of Supervisors, Warm Springs, Virginia

[2004, Note: At the invitation of Bath Supervisor Stuart Hall, these comments
were made during the pendency of a purchase of 12,000 acres from Virginia Hot
Springs, Inc., the owners of the historic resort, The Homestead, by The Nature
Conservancy and Celebration Associates. The VHS shareholders voted to sell, and
thus TNC took title to 9,000+acres of mountain and farm land while Celebration,
an “upscale” land development company took title to approximately
3,000 acres. Celebration was the Disney developer for the town of Celebration
in Florida, a “new urbanism” development which many critics and
residents have seen as beset by a multitude of problems including disgust with
the “price which people pay to live in an artificial-looking fairy
tale”, with cookie-cutter social engineering, with ‘new-age’
schools and with oppressive, restrictive covenants on private property.]

Members of the Board:

Thank you for the invitation to attend your monthly meeting, and the
opportunity to comment on issues involving the proposed sale of 9000+ acres to
The Nature Conservancy.

The Virginia Land Rights Coalition is a private, not-for-profit,
non-political organization primarily concerned with protecting the sanctity of
private property rights in Virginia, and with educating Virginians, and all
Americans, about the vital importance of the role of private property ownership
in preserving a free society.

In recent years there has been an accelerating and concerted attack on
property rights by federal and state governments, by bureaucratic agency
regulations, and by a growing number of radical, self-anointed and elitist
“environmental” NGOs (non-governmental organizations), such as TNC,
whose goals are very much opposed to the principles of Constitutional government
and the God-given rights of life, liberty and property which are protected by
our Constitution.